The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-04-14

true inwardness of everything worth eat.
ing, let me assure her that she would be
as little apt to please Chinaman o. II
she had never seen stove.
By the way, let any fair reader of this
imagine herself the wife of Q Chinamsn
the wife of my friend Hop Sing, for In
stance, down In Cherry street. Hop Sing
is fat and rosy Chinaman in very COM
Portable circumstances and he wears coats
Of pink or pale blue silk, that almost any
woman would be tempted to make over
into dress, so that am not imagining
that any Yankee girl is making as bad .
match as some who read this may yet fall
into.
Having married my reader, whether
she will or no, will take further liberties
with her and imagine she has strolled
into her husbands Kitchen to see him and
his friends prepare an extra good Sun;
day dinner. Nearly everything she will
to her az locomotive would be to
South Sea Islander, and quite naturally
so, for most of the edibles the New York
Chinaman provides for his table come
from China. They do not can or bottle
food there-they dry whatever they want
to keep, and In that way the Cinnamon
here buy whatever they get from their
fatherland. She will see two or three
shriveled up objects that look like the
bats some Of US have seen In showcase
in museum, and will be told that they
are pigeons for delicious stew. She
will see some shriveled, wrinkled and
emaciated potatoes or yams that were
dug years ago and have come IL, 900 miles
or more and now look IS II they might
once have been alive like the pigeons and
have suffered death by wasting consump-
tion. Being Chinese, they are preferred
even in this condition to our potatoes
that do not cost nearly 80 much. A mass
of dry leaves that the American woman
might imagine were tea leaves are not
such at all but bay leaves which the Chi
nese use immoderately in half the dishes
they cook. They and the yams and the
pigeons are all going into the stew. and
so Is the withered old melon that Chi
namsn is slicing. He will tell her that
the melon is ginger; but 1t is not what we
call ginger Of course. Outside, 1t looks
like retired citron melon, that some gro
Ger threw into the street year or two
ago, but 1t slices into white sheets like
turnip meat. 1t tastes like wet paper and
glue and Is considered great delicacy.
My Chinaman's wife will see some
candy being made to begin dinner with,
and the cooks will be fashioning dough
into some shapes very like great water
lilies, the b6vl of each being filed up
with minced-up dried tongue, dried fish
and dried bay leaves. Among other
things Of pastry under way are some
shaped like balls, few to be left empty
and the rest to be filed with delicious
preserves. Finally, she will see little
~ s,Vs&1
such babble of excited talk by all in the
carefulness on the part of the master of
the house that 1t will appear quite GER
tain to her that this is something very
precious. And so It is apt to be-tea that
every Chinaman prizes more even than
white wife-the first pick, or first chop"
as they call 1t, of the best tea plants In
the best tea plantations in China. It cost
$6 pound by the time It reaches New
York. The tiniest, most fragile little
cups will be brought from the cupboard
at the same time, cups that hold hardly
mouthful, though that does not matter as
their contents are to be slipped rather
than drank. If she Is newly married,
this Chinaman's wife will hasten to help
her husband by bringing him curious
tea pot she has seen standing In the best
room on table by itself. 1t has big
brass cylinder at the bottom and little
one ON top, while from the bottom cylin-
der springs long spout reaching far over
the top cylinder. II she brings this tea
pot all the Cinnamon will laugh, for that
tea pot is in reality Chinese tobacco
pipe, made 80 that the top cylinder will
hold as much black tobacco mixed with
molasses as will roll up into wad the
size of a pea. The bottom cylinder Is
kept full Of water and the tobacco smoke
is sucked through the water and cleansed
of its nicotine. If 1t wasn't 1t would kill
an OK, presuming that an OK could try to
smoke tit is so very strong. The real
tea pot in which the precious tea is to be
brewed will next be produced and will
be seen to look something like q lady's
muff, the vessel of pottery being fitted
into padded hood or mum, cased in silk,
to keep the tea In the pot warm for as
long as an hour or more after 1t has been
brewed.